When We Celebrate PR/Social Media Success: Why Do We Always Zero in on Impressions?

There’s a huge dichotomy going on in the PR/social industry that’s been bothering me for a while now and I just want to talk about this for a minute today.

The topic: Using impressions as the key success metric when we celebrate case study wins.

We see it all the time.

In fact, I just saw it this week when a friend, and someone I, and many people, respect, showcased a case study he/she had recently worked on. This person talked about the campaign in the post and ended it talking about how successful it has been based on the huge number of media impressions it has generated so far.

The number was in the tens of millions. It was impressive. But, if you’ve worked in marketing or comms for any length of time, you also know those gaudy impression numbers are a dime a dozen.